


rivers and roads.

by orphan_account



Category: NCIS
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/M, Other Ships Not Mentioned in Tags
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-05
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-10-04 17:23:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17308733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: The Ellick High School AU no one wanted but you're all getting anyway.





	1. Nick: Autumn

**Author's Note:**

> Content Warning: possibly upsetting mentions of; and plot elements involving bullying throughout.

Nick Torres had been on earth for sixteen years, and he’d had twenty-two, permanently temporary, home addresses. His latest one lands him in Oklahoma, where his sister is, with his little baby niece. He can’t take living with his Mom in Miami anymore, not after his Dad died.  
Not after he’s blown up on his mom so many times that she’s probably afraid of what’s going to happen now that he’s bigger than her.

Nick’s not a bad guy, but he looks in the mirror every morning and he knows he’s going to be a bad guy. 

Everyone’s always says it, that his face is permanently twisted into an intimidating glare and his muscles are always flexed and ready to fight. His knuckles are always bruised because he’s always beating on the walls, the doors, and the mirrors when he gets sick of having to look at himself. 

Like every bad guy in the movies, bad seeps out of him, and poisons everywhere he’s ever been and everywhere he’ll end up. 

He’s late to his first day of school, of course, because he forgot, and Lucia already left to take Christina to daycare. 

So Nick puts on his father’s jacket, shoves his wallet in his pocket and leaves his backpack behind. He doesn’t plan on going to class, anyway, just exploring town until someone calls the cops on some kid stalking around looking in the store windows. He locks the door of their clapboard row house, and starts walking along the highway, kicking stones and cans. He’s halfway to town before he has to start flipping off the creepy old guy in a plaid shirt who stops beside him and tries to offer him a ride. 

Yeah, right. 

The Torres kids might have always been poor, but they had cable TV. 

He knew a killer when he saw one and grinned when the man shook his head and drove off.

There’s nothing in the center of the town, just the same two lane road leading in and out, clusters of buildings that are all named after admirals and generals, stretching out on to dirt roads that lead to houses that all smell like manure and diesel fuel. The school’s not hard to find, since it’s got a huge sign in front of it and at least a couple dozen trucks parked haphazardly on a yellowed grass field. 

When he gets to school, the halls are quiet and the lady who he checks in with at the office doesn’t even look up from her computer and points him down the hall towards his home room. 

It’s mid-October, and he’s only got a couple more birthdays until he can enlist. 

Nick shuffles up the stairs, his boots light on the fading tile, watching students through the windows that face into the hall, hands shoved deep in his pockets. He’s probably got a couple periods to kill before anyone notices some guy they’ve never seen before, and that’s as good a time as any to explore. Nick’s been at so many schools that he’s figured out pretty much all of them are built the same, so he follows his instinct and ends up in the hallway facing the school’s library, which is empty except for the librarian and a couple kids getting extra credit putting away books. 

He hasn’t read in months, and there’s a couple updates on his favourite series’ that he can see from the window, so he heads up the hallway- and that’s when he hears it. 

This sort of whimpering sound, thin and reedy like Christina when she’s sick, and a sharp intake of air following the sobs. Someone’s crying. Nick glances down the hall- empty gray-white and lined with stickered blue lockers. There was nothing down the hall except the stairs, and a window that faced the football field below. 

Out of curiosity, he follows the sound- growing louder and quieter as he walks. Whoever it was knew someone was coming. Smart somebody, then, he thinks to himself, as he’s reaching the end of the hall, sweeping his eyes over either side. 

There she was, wedged in the gap between the lockers and the window. 

“Go away.”, she says weakly- trying to ball herself up further into herself, her knees already drawn to her chest. 

“Hey- I- are you okay?”, he asks, a little awkwardly. Looking down on her, he can see her watery hazel eyes, soft, blond hair that’s trailing down past her shoulders. She’s wearing an orange turtleneck and jeans, bright blue sneakers meticulously free of mud peeking out just under the hems. 

“What do you care?”, she snaps, her voice breaking. 

Nick shrugs. “I don’t know, I’m bored, I don’t really know where my classes are.”

She furiously wipes at her eyes with her sleeves.

“Nice sweater by the way.”, he says, thinking aloud for a moment. 

The girl blinks in disbelief, her mouth moving to repeat the words for herself. “You’re new here.”

“Yeah, what gave it away? My tan?”, he jokes. 

She shakes her head, her eyes locking to the ground. “You’re talking to me, which is- not something you’re gonna be doing for long. I- I’m Ellie, by the way.”

“I’m Nick.”, he tells her, offering her his hand to help her up. He’s surprised to see her take it, without a moment’s suspicion, and dust off her jeans as she stands. Ellie’s tall for a girl, and rail-thin, but strong. He can see wiry muscle underneath the thin knit of her sweater as she dusts of her palms again, as if she can’t get them clean enough. 

“Thanks, Nick.”

“Yeah, no problem. Anyway, yeah are you okay? Just a bad day, right?”, he asks again. 

“Yeah. Something like that. This is my locker, anyway- it’s- you can go now. You don’t have to stick around.”, says Ellie. 

Nick turns to the locker she had been beside, watching the soap trickle down the door from a hastily scrubbed away note that someone had scrawled just above her lock. 

He couldn’t read it, but from Ellie’s reaction, he knew it couldn’t have been good, and pulls his shirtsleeve out of his jacket and wipes away at the remainder. 

“What- Hey, what are you doing?”

“People can be mean. It doesn’t have to mean anything to you.”, he told her, pulling the lock forward to offer it to her.

“Sometimes it means something.”

Ellie’s breathing has calmed, though Nick could still see her shoulders shake as she pulls her books from the shelf in her locker. 

Shifting his head, he could see it was meticulously organized, even her textbooks were symmetrically ordered and her colorful folders were alphabetical on the bottom shelf. Her jacket was hung neatly on a hook, her scarf already looped around its neck. Ellie had a little box of candy bars on the top shelf, one of which she pulled out with her books as she shut the door behind her. 

“Thanks, Nick.”, she tells him, her eyes still not quite meeting his as she offered him the snack.  
“Here. These are two dollars at the vending machine, which means you’re paying almost thirty cents for every ten grams of chocolate. It’s robbery.”  
Nick blinks, trying to catch up to her in his mind. “Uh- thanks. I think. Like I said, no problem. And whoever you’re crying over- he’s not worth it and he’ll probably end up pumping gas, you know?” He gladly takes her offering, and stuffs it in his pocket beside his wallet. 

“Maybe.”

Ellies breath hitches up as she wraps her arms around her books, which Nick had swept over se she had gathered them. Advanced Calculus, Elementary Computer Programming, and Physics.

“Uh, you a senior? Gonna graduate soon?”, Nick asks, following her as she starts to walk up the hall. 

“I’m a sophomore. I’m just ahead. And Nick- seriously. You won’t want to be seen around me.” 

“What...why?” 

Suddenly, the bell rings loudly through the hall. Students flood into the hallway coming up the stairs and out of the labs on either side of the library. At least thirty kids file into the library, and Nick mentally kicks himself for missing his chance to quietly catch up.

“It doesn’t matter. Thanks, Nick.”, she says again, hardly looking back at him as she shuffled in the opposite direction towards the stairs. 

“Yeah- hey- wait-” 

But he had lost her, in a sea of baseball caps and football jackets, tight jeans and t-shirts two sizes too big. The smell of potato chips and gym socks and the chatter of kids who split into groups and jostle past him without even a second’s notice. 

Sighing, Nick unwraps Ellie’s candy bar, and starts chewing.

-

He doesn’t see her for a few weeks after that, because after he drops in to gym class a couple of times, the football coach is so impressed that Nick makes the team mid-season, and while he isn’t a starter- he’s second string, which is close enough that the football guys suddenly think he’s one of them. 

He starts getting invited out to the parties, and making out with girls he never remembers the day after. Lucia gets a couple of paychecks together and surprises him with a car, an old beater that some of the guys get together to help him fix on the weekends. 

As far as the places he’s lived have gone, Oklahoma’s not the worst.  
Even though he’s got girls batting their eyelashes practically every time he walks up the halls, though- he’s barely even thought of girls at all until he’s with the guys at the post-playoff party after Thanksgiving, and everyone’s moaning about their girlfriends going Black Friday shopping and how the girls are going to bust their balls at the Winter Dance. 

“We should all be Tim McGee. Scarecrow won’t say no to him and all he’s gotta do is show up with his pants this high off the ground.”, Buckner, the Junior Varsity quarterback tells them, as he’s thoughtfully chewing on popcorn. Buckner runs their crew like a tight ship, which makes sense since his Dad’s deployed on a Navy ship in Bosnia. 

“You’d sic Scarecrow on poor McGeek? That kid did my math homework for all of middle school-”, that’s Jake Malloy, their running back- “- he don’t deserve that.” 

Jake’s like their resident sucker. If Buckner told him to jump, Nick’s pretty sure he would.

Nick takes the popcorn bowl and pops a few pieces in his mouth, trying to follow the conversation. Some of the guys can get pretty mean about the ugly girls at school, but they’re never creepy about it like the guys on late night movies are. 

“Hey, who’s Scarecrow?”, he asks, and he swears half the team’s mouths close and they all turn to stare at him. 

“Seriously? Do you just live under a rock, dude?”, Jake sputters. 

“Is it….uh, Lauren? That one girl with the really big teeth?”, Nick tries to come up with more names, but he just draws a blank. 

“Nah, besides, I’m pretty sure Lauren’s going to get her teeth fixed. Seriously dude, it’s Eleanor Bishop.”, Buckner fills in, and most of the rest of the guys nod in agreement. 

“The straight up worst. She thinks she’s better than all of us just because she took some certified nerd test that means apparently, that she never shuts up. I was in Chemistry with her last year and she spent like, half the year in the front row just running her mouth.”, one of the guys tells Nick. 

“Yeah, the whole part of the year she wasn’t sitting under the table eating Cheerios. She’s gross.”

Nick shakes his head, searching his memory for an Eleanor Bishop. “Um, blond, kind of taller?”, he asks, remembering flashes of that girl who he had seen in the hall on his first day. She’d been crying, and she’d given him a candy bar. But she had been Ellie. 

“Yeah, that’s why we call her Scarecrow. She’s flatter than Kansas and no one would want to be stuck in the dark with just her.”, says Jake. 

“You mean you’ve seen proof?”, Buckner giggles, and the whole room erupts in groans and laughter. 

Nick stays quiet, because he remembers Ellie being okay, even pretty if she hadn’t been crying when they had met. 

“No!”, Jake shouts back. “I wouldn’t ever want to- plus I have a girlfriend. Anna would kill me.” 

“And we call her that because she’s got a stick up her- you know. I swear, if her pencils aren’t in the right order, she throws a fit and a half. I never push my chair in in homeroom and I can just feel that rage. It’s hilarious.”, Buckner laughs. “But yeah, if you haven’t had the displeasure, just stay away. Sure wish I did, but my family’s been in this town forever.” 

Nick could feel his palms grow slightly sweaty, his neck growing hotter under his collar. Still, some girl wasn’t worth losing rep with the guys, especially not one he barely even knew, even if she had given him free food. 

“Um...you talk about this girl a lot huh, Buckner. You sure you don’t have a secret crush?”, he teases, getting a couple laughs from the group. 

“Oh, hell no. If anyone has a crush it’s Malloy. Hey Jake, go out with Ellie.”, Buckner orders. 

“Did you miss how I’ve been with Anna for six months?”, Jake moans. “And no thanks, I don’t want to get rabies off her dirty pole.”

Nick watches as Buckner gets that evil glare behind his steely eyes, that look that he’s been on the other side of so many times in practice when he calls a play. It’s like the gears in his brain evolved to scope out every little weakness, and Nick’s seen this on Animal Planet before. 

The Predator’s got to assert his power. 

“No one cares if you get rabies, Malloy. It’ll be funny. Even Anna’ll think it’s funny. Pretend to be her boyfriend and wind her up, and then at the Spring Dance, drop the curtain, you’ve been with Anna all along. Boom. Bet she’ll freak. It’ll be one for the yearbook for sure.” 

“Spring Dance? What the hell, dude? That’s twisted.” 

Buckner just shrugs, and takes a swig from his soda. “C’mon, it’s just a prank. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t actually have any contagious diseases.” 

Jake shifts in his seat, like he’s almost ready to call out Buckner and put a stop to all of it.  
“Just- as long as Anna’s cool with it. Because, well, I like her.” 

“Okay.” 

They spit into their hands, and shake on it. 

\- 

Nick stays at the party until most of the guys clear out, and it’s just him, Buckner and Jake cleaning up. Everyone else forgets about Eleanor Bishop and Buckner’s plan as soon as he’s brought out his Playstation, but Nick hasn’t been able to stop thinking about it all night, recovering little flashes of Ellie again and again as he sips at his soda. 

How he’d noticed her eyes were bright even though she’d been crying. How she’d told him sometimes it mattered what people said. Her sweater had been what, blue, or orange? 

She’d seemed nice, and she’d been the first person to be nice to him in Oklahoma. 

He and Jake head to his car a little after midnight, and Nick drops Jake off at his place before he gets back on the highway and heads home.

He’s still thinking about Ellie and Jake, and Buckner, and how stupid it is that everyone who was in the room knows what they’re doing is wrong, but none of them spoke up. He couldn’t do it, he’s new already and has enough of his own problems without the entire school jumping on him for getting into their business, but Jake could have. 

Why hadn’t he? 

Nick catches his own reflection in the rearview mirror when he’s pulling into he and his sister’s place, and the question is written all over his deep, brown bad guy eyes. 

Why didn’t you?


	2. Winter: Ellie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the nice feedback, everybody! This chapter is pretty Ellie heavy due to the holidays being part of it, but she does get some love. There's a lot of ground to cover since Spring is going to be an interesting time! Enjoy!

Ellie Bishop has never missed an early Christmas morning for as long as she’s been alive, even on her very first Christmas, when her Mom tells her she woke up the entire house at exactly five; and wouldn’t stop crying until her oldest brother George had finally taken her downstairs and watched her chubby, new baby hands rip at paper and ribbons until she’d worn herself out. This year’s no different, except she leaves George with John and Robert on the floor of their clubhouse, their faces lit by the fire they’d all gleefully built late last night. Ellie tiptoes from her sleeping bag to her jacket and boots, shutting the door as quietly as she can as she heads up the path to their house. 

Ellie’s breath circles her in the cold air, which slams into her newly-woken lungs with a sort of force that makes her feel like she’s alive, instead of just freezing cold in the dusk, which is barely bright enough for her to see properly. Thankfully, her parents had left the door unlocked, expecting the kids would come inside if the night had gotten any colder. The whole of their property is quietly blanketed under a sheet of clean, white snow, so perfect and placid that Ellie hates to ruin it with the tread of her heavy snow boots sinking into it. 

She stomps them clean on the doormat, and kicks them off before slipping into the house, where she can see that the kitchen lights are on, and their fireplace is happily burning bright. If there’s one person who beats her to Christmas, it’s her Dad. People have been telling her since she was a little kid that she’s more of her dad than any of the boys are; they’re both great shots and big eaters; slim shoulders in soft plaid shirts and honey-blond hair that falls in their matching hazel eyes. 

Even though her Mom would never let her say it, Ellie’s weird like him, too. 

Her Dad’s quiet and stoic, his mind all made up of puzzles and the same buzzing that overtakes their quiet moments, when she lets herself be held like a little girl and race him to finish the Sunday crossword or figure out what’s going wrong with the engines of one of her brother’s cars. He buys her books about Navajo codebreakers and lets her stay up well past midnight, watching videos they’ve mail ordered with a big map of Europe between them, trying to figure out where the Nazis hid those paintings. If they figure it out, he tells her, she won’t even have to get a job in college like all the boys have, because they’ll pay for all of it from going on TV and telling everyone how they followed the rivers from France and the trains to Switzerland and cracked one of the world’s biggest mysteries. 

She’d squinted at the TV then, a freeze frame of one of the missing paintings, and chuckled. 

“Or, I could just forge one of these.” 

“That’s my girl!”, he laughed, before they had both gone back to tracing the map with their fingers. 

Even if they hadn’t spent so much time together, her Dad’s one of the maybe two people on the entire earth who doesn’t think Ellie’s strange beyond help, like the entire high school, and even her Mom, who’s watched her with her lips tight in a straight line for most of the past two years, probably wondering when she’ll turn into a normal girl who won’t be alone for the rest of her life. 

Too bad, Ellie thinks. George is probably going to end up carrying on the Bishop line, which means all her future nieces and nephews are going to be big and stocky, and always ask way too many questions. 

She joins her father wordlessly, as he munches on the Christmas cookies that she and the boys had baked to leave out for Santa and the reindeer, an old tradition that they would never think of giving up now that three out of the four of them were well past halfway through college. 

“The big man’s appetite really isn’t what it used to be. I think he’s started counting calories, which- Ellie- would you get me my notebook- how many calories would one burn going around the earth at its terminal velocity for at least twelve hours…”, he muses between bites. Ellie happily retrieves his legal pad from the living room, and joins him at the table, sipping on the cold glass of milk while he scribbles. 

Ellie’s Dad’s worked for the trains since before George was born, mapping out the paths that almost everything in the country takes to get across it. She think it’s pretty much the perfect job, even if it means she’s alone most of the time, and lately, with just her Mom, and George within driving distance. 

The calculations take the two of them well past sunrise, and a whole bowl of the cookies, and some of the peppermint snickerdoodles they hadn’t been supposed to touch until after lunch, until a sharp knock at the front door brings them both back to the world that’s in front of them. 

It’s Gibbs, the county sheriff, who’s joined them for Christmas ever since Ellie’s mom found out what happened to his wife and daughter back when he lived in another state. Some cops got the wrong enemies on their side, and his daughter would have been Ellie’s age, but the world wasn’t kind to anyone, least of all Leroy Jethro Gibbs, who’s standing on their front porch in his Marines sweatshirt, carrying several packages wrapped in craft paper and bags of groceries.

“Morning, Bishop. Morning, Ellie.”, he greets them, leaving most of the presents on their sofa beside the tree. 

“Good Morning, Gibbs!”, Ellie says cheerily, through a mouthful of snickerdoodle. He grins at her, offering her a small box with her name scribbled in pencil on the side. 

“Go on, early bird gets an early present.”, he tells her, gently ruffling her hair. 

Inside is a prism of smoothly sanded wood, made of interlocking pieces that come apart in her hands when she twists it. Ellie is surprised for a moment, before she squints down at the pattern of how each piece forms a chain from its’ corners with the next, and reassembles it with ease. 

“Thanks.” 

“You know, I thought that would take at least five minutes. I’m getting too old for this, aren’t I?” 

“Maybe a little bit.” 

Gibbs lays out the food on the Bishops’ counter, and digs for a cutting board underneath their sink.

“Come on, Ellie. These potatoes won’t peel themselves.”

“Right.”

She jumps from her stool, and moves to join Gibbs, digging in the pockets of her jacket for the knife that she’d inherited when Robert had finally gone off to college. 

“Hey, Gibbs?”, she asks, when her father disappears back upstairs to go and get her mother, who would doubtlessly complain until the sight of one of her children put the slightest grin back on her face. 

“What is it?” 

“I’m...normal, right? I mean...people will...come around...eventually?” 

Gibbs lets the silence hang between the two of them, nothing but their breathing and the soft scraping of blades on potato flesh. Ellie feels like she’d rather be kicked by a horse than let the quiet swallow the both of them. 

“Sorry. It’s silly.” 

Gibbs huffs out a heavy breath. “Things get better, Ellie. Just takes a while most of the time.”

-

Something changes when Ellie goes back to school, a seismic shift that completely throws her off when she jogs up the stairs to her locker, and finds the door suspiciously clean, missing the usual epithets of “Ellie BigMouth” and “Get your shots.” and things that made her cry before she’d even read them through the whole way. The other kids are terrifyingly quiet today, their chatter made up of after-Christmas sales and family holiday drama when she passes them to get to homeroom, the usual little digs about wouldn’t she donate some of her hair to feed the horses mercifully, but still very strangely absent.   
She heads up to her front row seat, and watches the rest of them file in to the class, but nothing changes from every other day of the school year so far. Jake Malloy and Thomas Buckner squeeze through the door practically together and Nick Torres, the kid she remembered from his very first day, brought up the rear behind them. They were all joking about football trades and something that had happened at Jake’s New Year’s Eve party.

Jake takes his seat beside her, and Ellie’s stomach clenches, expecting him to make his chair leg scream against the floor when he pushes it back, or turn around and ask Buckner if she was out sick since there wasn’t a difference between Ellie and the two by four clearly in her seat. Instead, he turns in his chair to face her, and greets her with a soft, calm, smile. 

“Hey Ellie. Happy New Year.”, he says, his voice colored with an obvious, open, happiness. “Did you have a good Christmas?”

Ellie blinks, half in shock and half because she’s imagined so many times what she’d say to Jake’s face if he ever did look at her as more than dirt- but now that the time’s here, she’s at a loss. 

“Was my- what?”

“Oh, I just wanted to know if you had a good Christmas. My grandparents came up from Alabama, which was nice. Did you have any family come for the holidays?”, he asks.

Ellie’s mouth is dry, and she can barely string the words together to come up with a response. 

“My- no, I mean yes. My- um, my brothers were here. It was good.”

“Sounds like it.”, Jake tells her, his eyes missing their usual mischievous sparkle. He hadn’t even chuckled at her sputtering practically in his face. Ellie squints, and shakes her head. 

It’s all just so- bizzare. Something has to be going on, because Ellie Bishop’s not that dumb. Boys like Jake, and Tom, and Nick, aren’t nice to girls like her. 

“Are you okay?”, she blurts out. 

“Yeah. I’m really good.”

She expects him to follow it up with something like “at winding your dumb ass up!”, but Jake falls quiet when their teacher starts taking attendance, leaving Ellie with another mystery to solve. 

By the end of the day, she’s pretty sure that she’s stepped into the Hellmouth from Buffy and ended up in some kind of weird parallel universe. 

Anna, one of the meanest girls in her grade, happily sits next to Ellie at lunch, bringing the rest of her friends to form a circle around her, complimenting her on how they couldn’t believe her hair was “that gorgeous color, naturally”, and gushing over how lucky she was to eat whatever she wanted without having to worry about her weight. Jessica, the girl who had taped paper towels to the inside of Ellie’s training bra when she’d left it in the change room in gym class, gives her an unopened bag of chips, sliding it under the table when Ellie’s taking notes in their English class, grinning down at her shocked face. 

There’s a little note stuck to the top of the bag, that says nothing goes with shakespeare better than snacks!, signed off with little gel pen hearts. 

Even Thomas, who’s been mean to her since preschool, offers to walk home with her at the end of their first week back, since they live within a mile of each other, and he tells her he doesn’t mind the distance. Ellie figures it can’t be too bad, since everyone else crowds the town streets after school and there are parents everywhere waiting for little kids to get off the school bus, so she won’t end up like one of those girls on those mystery shows her mom likes. 

Her teeth are clenched together until she can see her mom’s truck parked in their driveway, and she and Thomas are at the path that winds up to her house. Relief floods into her, warming even her almost-frozen toes. 

“Bye Ellie. See you tomorrow.”, he says, turning to go back through the grove of trees that separates the Bishops’ property from the highway. 

‘Wait- Thomas- hey, wait!”

He turns, blinking up at her from behind his Navy baseball cap. 

“Yeah?”

“Why are you...why is everyone being so nice to me?”

Thomas just shrugs. “Well- uh, I dunno. I guess I was a total jerk to you...and I, I dunno, I just don’t want to do that anymore. And maybe everyone else, I dunno, I guess we all kind of realized you’re all right, Ellie.” 

“That doesn’t sound right.” 

“I guess...what I’m trying to say is...I’m sorry about what a loser I used to be. And I told my friends that- that you’re just a normal person and you know, we should treat you like that. I guess, you’re actually kind of cool. Everyone says so.” 

Ellie is shell-shocked, and barely registers Thomas telling her that he has to go, he and his mom are calling his dad on his ship that night and he can’t be late. 

If her mother notices Ellie breezing through the front door with a giant, stupid smile on her face, excited for the first time in years to wake up the next morning, she doesn’t say a thing.

-

Jake Malloy asks her out at the end of January, the very same week that he gets his Dad’s truck, and suddenly, Ellie is getting picked up from her front porch, filling her mornings with flat-ironing the static out of her hair and putting on the lip gloss that Jake loves to kiss from her lips when they’re far enough away that her Mom can’t see the two of them. Her Dad’s not a fan of Jake, and says that he’s not the kind of guy that he would have thought of for her, but then again, her Dad’s never liked any of her brothers’ girlfriends the first time he meets them either, and he trusts her enough that he keeps his opinion of Jake mostly to himself. 

Anna comes over with Jessica and her giant case of makeup from her little sister’s beauty pageants, and teaches her how to look like a movie star, which Ellie’s mother welcomes with an odd sort of patience for the girls that have ripped through her living room like a tornado that she never had for when she and Tim McGee would spread out every Sunday crossword of the year and try to race each other to solving them. 

She can hardly see through the sticky layers of mascara Anna had put on her, her lips are itching from the bright pink lipstick, and Ellie’s pretty sure her knife is going to be useless now thanks to how she can’t really use her hands until the fresh polish dries, but she tries her best to smile through it. After all, there’s a little part of her that’s happy, mostly because she’s never imagined not being alone in her own living room. 

“Ell. My Mom’s coming to pick me at five. Wanna come for a sleepover? Our house has cable, and my mom doesn’t care if we play the music a little louder.”, Anna asks her, sprawled out on the living room rug where Ellie used to spend her Saturday nights hunting for stolen treasure. 

“I’ll be there, too- we can prank call the guys and have a Buffy marathon!”, Jessica adds. 

It all sounds like heaven, but Ellie looks up at the clock, and hesitates. “Sorry, but I can’t. I start doing homework at six, and actually- I’m going over to Tim’s house to use the computer for a programming assignment. Then I have to work on that Literature report...maybe next week? My mom could drive us to the mall…” 

“See, Anna- this is what Jake’s always talking about!” 

Ellie freezes. “What’s he always talking about?” 

Jessica doesn’t meet her eyes, suddenly occupied by the stitching of the rug.   
“Nothing- Ellie, it’s just stupid stuff guys say- he probably didn’t even mean it-” 

“Um, well he’s my boyfriend. So I should know what he’s saying about me.” 

“You have to promise not to get mad.”, Jessica says, leaning in closer to Ellie and Anna.

“Promise.” 

Ellie’s heart clenches again, preparing for the absolute worst. 

“He just says that you’re way too...Well, it’s kind of embarrassing how you seem like you’re smarter than him.” 

“But I am smarter than him.” 

“Obviously. But it’s embarrassing for guys when their girlfriends are total brainiacs. It’s just weird, because it’s not really a girl thing, so it’s like, if he wanted someone who was a total geek, he’d be dating, you know, a guy.”, Anna filled in. 

“That doesn’t even make sense.” 

“Well it’s just stupid guy stuff, like I said. But you know, it’s like what my mom said. Happy girls are the prettiest, and happy girls don’t always have their noses in a book. It’s just, something guys judge other guys on. It’s weird when the girl’s way over the guy. You gotta compliment each other.”

“Yeah, Jake loves that you’re smart, obviously. It’s just not really like, respectful to your boyfriend to be a total brainiac. It doesn’t mean drop your GPA, just you know, be cool about it and give him some motivation. He’s got to really like you because he could have any girl in school”, says Jessica. 

Ellie nods slowly, feigning understanding. Her parents and Gibbs and her brothers had always loved her weird brain, but then again, maybe that was why they had been her only friends until now. 

“You know what...I’m going to go ask my Mom if I can spend the night.”, she says, slowly, letting her words sink into a chorus of happy squeals and giggles from her new friends. 

“Atta girl!”

-

The ground thaws after Valentine’s Day, and Ellie is careful not to get her new boots wet before she climbs into Jake’s truck. She still can’t have the windows down because her hair sticks to her lip gloss, but Jake’s hand is warm in hers when they walk from the parking lot into school together. He feels warm, solid, calming the racing in heart that she hasn’t been able to get rid of. 

They’re a little late, enough so they’ll be the last to come into homeroom, but not enough to get in trouble. 

“Am I going to see you at lunch today?”, Jake asks her in a whisper while Thomas and Nick are goofing off behind him. 

“Uh, maybe after- I have a class.”

“Which one?”

“Something with computers, it’s not a big deal, I’ll be out right after.” 

“I’ll see you for the pep rally then?”

“Definitely.” 

-

The football boys are running a face painting station in the gym for the spring pep rally, between the debate club dunk tank and the theater kids’ improv radio, where Ellie gleefully gets one of the boys to serenade Jake with a Britney Spears song. 

They’re all going to paint their girlfriend’s faces, and then let the other kids vote on who did the best job, and Jake’s supposed to paint her as a tiger. Thomas is drawing butterfly wings on each of Jessica’s cheeks, Nick is working on a girl who Ellie’s pretty sure is a junior, and Anna is standing by with her yearbook camera at the ready. 

“So Ellie, tell me again, is the tiger the one with the stripes or the big mane?”, Jake jokes when she takes her seat, and she slaps lightly at his leg. 

“Up to you, I guess.” 

Ellie shuts her eyes, and lets the chatter of the gym around her buzz through her, letting a small smile settle on her face. 

-

Nick glances over from working on Izzy’s sexy clown face to Jake and Ellie, who seems to be floating on a cloud of bliss from her fold-out chair, shaking his head.   
Buckner’s stupid game is still on, and even though the whole school’s been nicer to Ellie, they turn on her faster than he can turn doughnuts in his car. 

“I can’t believe she actually thinks we’re her friends.”, Anna had laughed before Ellie came into the gym, spilling her girl secrets from their last sleepover to Jake. 

“I mean, she’s literally never had friends.”, he had said as he pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Who would have ever thought such a geek would be this stupid?”

Nick finishes Izzy’s face paint, letting her go to look in the mirror, and takes his seat next to Anna on the floor while she snaps away at kids at various booths. That’s when he notices. 

Jake isn’t drawing a tiger on Ellie. He’s got one of the pink paint markers in his hand, and colors in Ellie’s cheeks before he trades it for a black marker and gently writes across her face, probably so she can’t tell that he’s making letters, not filling in details. 

“You can put a little lipstick on a pancake, but she’s still flat!”, it reads, and Nick’s mouth falls open. 

“That’s definitely one for the yearbook.”, Anna whispers to him, snapping several pictures before Jake tells Ellie she can open her eyes, and locks their arms together to show off his work to a few more of his buddies. Buckner is practically losing it on the ground, before Jessica smacks him hard across the back. 

“Dude, stop- she’ll know something’s up if you don’t shut up.” 

Jake leads Ellie back to their booth, and that’s when Nick takes his chance, catching her arm just as Jake turns away for a moment. 

“Ellie.” 

“What’s up, Nick?”, she says with a palatable joy in her voice. 

“Just- no words right now.”

He pulls her outside the gym with him, and shouts a quick “Just don’t move” before he disappears into the boys’ bathroom and runs a few paper towels under the sink. 

“You know I have a boyfriend, right?”, she teases. 

Nick grimaces. “It’s...your eyeshadow kind of...uh...well there’s just some all over your cheek here- must have come off when you guys were walking around the gym-”, he lies, wiping away as gently as he can at Jake’s words across her face.   
“Nooooo.”, she moans, in this cute little sing-song voice that makes Nick smile. 

“Don’t worry, it’s not that bad. There’s still a lot of time until everyone votes and- hey, I can fix it.”, he says, fishing a purple paint marker from his pocket. 

Ellie’s eyes are bright as he finishes wiping the rest of the black streaks across her chin away. “Really? You don’t have to, that’s Jake’s job.” 

“Well, I’ll have you know that I actually am something of an artist.”

“Uh-huh, and I’m Sally Ride.”, she laughs, forgetting for a moment that Nick would have no idea who that was. 

“The astronaut? Wow, this place sure has a big guest speaker budget.”

“You know Sally Ride?” Ellie’s incredulous, feeling the heat of Nick’s palms close to her face as he flicks the marker open. 

“Duh, doesn’t everyone love space? Anyway- shhhh. No moving, this part’s important-” 

Ellie feels the marker move against either side of her lips, and Nick squints down at the familiar sugar skull pattern he’d practiced on all his younger cousins over the years. Sure, maybe no one in Oklahoma would know Dia de los Muertos from Jesus, but he didn’t have too many more ideas in short supply. 

He tells her to open her eyes when he’s done, holding a compact to her face. 

“Oh my God, Nick! A sugar skull? I didn’t know you were Mexican!”

“I’m Venezuelan, but it’s all over Miami. You know Dia de los Muertos?”

“Of course! I’ve only read about it but- this is amazing, Nick.” 

“Glad you like it.”, he says as he’s leading her back to the gym, where Jake shamelessly has his arms around Anna until she notices Ellie and the two of them jump a foot apart in less than a second. 

“But Ellie, that amazing part?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s totally you. Just don’t forget that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm personally such a huge fan of the Gibbs/Ellie father-daughter relationship on the show, even more than I was a fan of Gibbs' similar relationship with Ziva and Abby. Ellie is totally like how I think that Gibbs imagines Kelly would have been...
> 
> Also, we don't know anything about her Dad (even tho her whole family has literally been on the show EXCEPT HIM) except that Ellie's a lot like him according to her mom in the Oklahoma episode sooooo obviously there was a ton of creative liberty taken there. :)


	3. Spring Part I: Nick

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm gonna finish this fic soon, I SWEAR! 
> 
> I'm so sorry that I've left it for so long and am so happy to see that you guys are still reading! Thanks again for waiting, I'm super sorry it took me so long!

Nick is rocking Christina in his arms, waiting for Lucia to come home. She's got a date tonight, so he's got some money and the TV all to himself. He's pretty sure babies shouldn't be watching The Sopranos, but then again, Christina's a pretty smart baby. She's not going to get ideas, and if she does, she's going to make the Torres kids filthy rich.

He settles her on to her blanket beside him on the couch, floating her little boats around her head while her chubby baby hands reach for the blue and red plastic.

The door swings open, aggressively, like there's a raging wind behind it when Lucia finally comes home, slamming the screen back against the door frame.

"Nicholas! Where the hell are you?', she shouts, and Nick can hear her kicking off her chunky heels and switching them for slippers on the tile of their front room.

"TV!", he shouts back, grinning as Christina grabs her boat back from him.

Lucia makes a sound, clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth as she stomps across the hallway, sidestepping the mess of unpacked boxes and dry groceries they have dumped across the carpet, out of exhaustion or laziness or both.

"Do you screw over women?", Lucia yells, coming into the living room and picking up Christina from the couch, cradling her baby against her full breasts, in a barely-there, lacy tank top that barely covers her ample cleavage.

Nick's eyes widen, his ears burning as he forces himself to look up at his sister, who's practically raised him for most of his life.

"Well? Do you?"

"I...", he looks down, embarrassed. "I guess...I'd like to- I mean, I'd be safe, I'd be smart about- um, you know what, condoms are free at school and I-"

Lucia buries her face in her free hand, bouncing an oblivious Christina on her hip.

"I didn't say screw, idiot, I said screw over. You better be nice to all those girls throwing themselves at you.", she scoffs, heading back into the kitchen to put her daughter in high chair. Nick scrambled off the poorly patched sofa, following her across stained linoleum tiles.

"'Course I am. I'm having fun, but I'm not...none of the guys are like that, okay?"

He sighs, and adds as an afterthought, "I'm staying straight, Luce- I promise."

She shakes her head, dark hair tumbling over her bare shoulders. "Don't ever fuck with a girl's feelings, you understand me? That shit stays with us, and if my baby brother is the reason some girl ends up going to therapy I'm gonna find you wherever you end up and kick your Enrique Iglesias ass."

Nick grins, helping himself to a glass of water from their overstuffed dishwasher. "Okay, okay. I'm gonna treat every girl like a queen.", he chuckles, winking at his niece.

Lucia reaches her hand out, her nails sharpened to red-tipped talons.

"Spit. We're gonna shake on it."

-

The moment he walks into the gym; Nick can feel Buckner's glare on him, following him like the scope of a rifle. He and Jake have been pissed since the pep rally, but maybe they're scared he'll tell a teacher or actually has relatives in jail, so they don't kick him out of their little circle. Plus, he's popular enough on his own now, after the football season, he'd started getting invited to parties on his own, and maybe Buckner and Jake are smart enough to know he could turn their little game around on them if he really wanted to.

Nick's got no idea where this feeling comes from, this weird, festering hatred for the two of them that starts in his middle and spreads through him, every time he sees Jake kiss Anna and thread their fingers together underneath their table at the cafeteria, his eyes trained on Ellie seated across from them as she happily digs into her lunch.

"Torres.", Buckner calls.

Nick cocks his head and waves, blinking up against the fluorescent lights of the  gym as it starts to fill with the other students in their PE class, clad in the school's tacky, shiny green shorts and baggy gray t-shirts. The kids from last period's gym class are huddled around one of the benches, chattering about the day's latest drama, when he crosses the floor to meet Buckner by the boys' change room.

"What's up?"

"Need a little favor. Gimme your backpack."

"There are better ways to ask me if you wanted to copy the algebra homework.", he tries to joke, feeling a pit of dread open in his stomach.

"Nah, I get that from McGee. Backpack. Let's go."

Nick clutches tighter to the straps around his shoulder. "Dude, why? Are you trying to steal my lunch money?"

Buckner's gaze hardens, and before Nick can react, he can feel himself being shoved back against the door of the locker room, which swings open easily against both of their weight as he stumbled backwards against a row of lockers.

"What the hell?"

Jake is behind him in a flash, grabbing the bag away before Nick can pitch his body forward and away from the other boys.

"Relax, I'm not gonna rat you out for having smokes, Torres. Just need a...here-"

Nick's head whips around, just in time to see Jake stuff a ball of fabric into the side of his bag. He can hear paper crumple and metal scraping against the plastic cover of his binder. Jake zips the bag wordlessly and tosses it back to him, where it lands at his feet beside the garbage can.

In a moment, suddenly, they all seem to relax. Buckner's face softens, and Jake steps back, leaving Nick tensed in between them, eyes darting in between his friends, a force of adrenaline pumping in his veins. 

"Dude. Relax.", Jake offers, reaching for his shoulder. "We just had to work fast."

"Why?", he asks again, his voice cracking pathetically.

"You'll see. It's not- like, drugs or whatever, okay?"

"Then why the hell-"

Buckner brings a finger to his lips. "Shh. Just get changed fast. Don't wanna be late."

With that, he and Jake turn to leave, leaving Nick's fingers shaking as he opens his locker, trying to calm the worry in his throat.

-

He doesn't have to wait long to see why stupid Jake and stupid Buckner needed to work so fast. Just as he's coming out of the locker room, Ellie comes racing out of the girls' room with a towel pressed against her chest, her bare feet slapping against the wood of the gym floor.

"Someone stole my clothes!", she wails, getting the attention of one of the gym teachers who looks up at her over the clipboard in her hands.

"This is why I always tell you guys to lock your stuff up.", the teacher says, his voice even and a bit tired, as though he's given this particular talk too many times to count.

"I did lock it up!", she protests, he voice thin and thready.

"And that's why we tell you guys to be careful with who has your combination.", the teacher sighs. "Alright- the rest of you start with 10 laps. Bishop...let's see if I have some spare wrestling singlets we can get you in."

-

The entire cafeteria is awash with laughter and chatter, as Nick sidles up beside Ellie, of all people, in the lunch line. Ellie usually brings her own food, but today is bacon meatloaf day which means she'll voraciously eat half the school's supply and he'll push the meat mush around his tray until he gets up the bravery to force a few spoonfuls down his throat. How Ellie takes it and likes it, for that matter, is one of those mysteries like the Bermuda Triangle.

She's wearing a singlet that's just a bit too tight, squeezing her chest and thighs so that Nick can see every wiry muscle and sharp bone that juts out between the bright yellow spandex, leaving barely anything to the imagination. She stands ramrod straight, muscles tensed as though she can't bring herself to relax. He would have thought someone would have offered her a sweater, but the heater's on full-blast, and he rolls his eyes, knowing it's all part of Jake and Buckner's plan to what- humiliate her?

He just can't wait until this whole thing is over, and he can bury his guilt about Ellie deep, deep down.

Nick's backpack is hanging heavy around his shoulders, and he bites down on his cheek to bury the nervousness for now. Thankfully, the gym teachers couldn't be bothered with some petty teenage prank, and no one had cared, or even suspected, that the football boys and their girlfriends had anything to do with the incident. Nick had carried his backpack slung over his shoulder, with the sleeve of Ellie's sweater hanging from an unzipped pocket, through his next two classes, until Jake noticed and shoved it back inside.

"Hey, Ellie.", he hears himself say, before he can stop his big dumb mouth from ratting him out.

She turns back to face him, her eyes slightly puffy, as if she's been trying to hide her tears, blinking them back before they can spill down her cheeks. Ellie's got these full cheeks, like a chipmunk or a cute little cartoon character, her baby face framed with dirty-blonde hair a strong contrast to the rest of her.

"Oh. Hi, Nick."

"You good?"

"Y-yeah. It's um- it's not a big deal. I guess there are a lot of pervs here, right. Anna said this happened to her last year, too."

Nick thinks of Anna, all buxom curves and a perky, full, ass, probably bending over in front of as many boys as she could in her school-mandated wrestling singlet, shaking his head lightly. 

"Yeah, lots of guys are totally pervs."

Ellie is biting down on her bottom lip, her eyes sweeping across the cafeteria.

As the weather's warmed, everyone's wardrobes seem to have shrunk to match; girls dressed in hip-scraping tube tops and frayed cutoffs, all boobs and butts, and guys in shirts so tight that they could be practically shirtless. Nick's still wearing his jacket over a too-small t-shirt and jeans; squeezing against his widening chest somewhere between looking trendy and cool and like a poor kid who can't afford new shirts.

"I'm happy you're not.", she says, her fingers brushing past his as she reaches for a fork from the condiment counter. Her smooth skin feels electric, shocking Nick back into the present and the weight of her things in his backpack.

"Yeah. Never saw the appeal, I guess.", he replies.

-

A few weeks pass, the sun setting later and later in the day; as the school starts to heat up in earnest in preparation for the spring formal. Everyone's still laughing about Ellie in her golden singlet, waving rulers around at each other in this subtle, teasing way behind her back. Nick's focus turns rapidly back to girls; and he asks Izzy out, but it turns out she's picked up an actual boyfriend since their little fling, and so he asks Alex Quinn, one of the JROTC captains, who's a senior. She laughs and calls him cute, grabs at his ass and makes a big show of saying yes in the middle of the hallway, but she's older and hot, funny, too- and has a job so she doesn't mind pitching in for Nick's tux to match the dress she's been saving up for for months.

Even Jake and Buckner are a little bit in awe of Nick, and he revels in the feeling for a few moments before feeling just a slight bit of disgust that he still cares so much for their approval. Ellie's clothes; her white and blue striped sweater and jeans; training bra and panties are still balled up inside her jacket and shoved at the bottom of his laundry, to be thrown out whenever Lucia goes out of town for one of Christina's doctors' appointments and he can be sure his sister won't find a girl's day of the week underwear in his trash.

Jake asks Ellie out with a bouquet of lilies he says he chose because they "matched her eyes", and Nick has to keep from rolling his when Jake pulls out a box of last year's Valentine's chocolates, Ellie's treat for "giving him the honor" of saying yes. It's sick, like a car crash that plays out in perfect harmony that he can't stop watching even though he knows he should call the police.

Maybe, Nick considers to himself, he should tell one of the counselors, write a note and drop it off at the office or something like that. He can forge girl writing pretty well, having written himself out as sick for most of middle school, but there are just too many risks.

Buckner would rat out Jake, and Jake would rat out everyone who knew about what they had planned at that party, and when Lucia found out, he'd be kicked back to Miami to be some anonymous presence that his mother glared at when he came in too late at night; ignored until he got into enough trouble in the neighborhood that she had to show up at court to pick him up and promise he would clean up this time, and the next time, and the next.

That couldn't happen, so he kept his head down and barrelled through stacks of homework, kept up with babysitting his niece, tried to help out Lucia when he could, and dropped off resumes he copied from the library photocopier at a bunch of places around town.

The weekend before the dance, Lucia surprises him with a pair of tiny pearl earrings she got at the Goodwill auction, and a matching pair of silver cufflinks for the tux Alex had rented for him. 

 

“These were Daddy’s.”, she tells him, her face drawn and paler than usual, as if the stress has finally started to get to her. Two kids, two jobs, Nick can’t blame her. 

 

“I’m gonna try to be around more after school’s over.”, he promises, getting a small, sad smile from his older sister. 

 

“No, Nicky. You just be a kid, okay?”, she tells him, patting his shoulder. “And you be good to this girl, okay? 

 

“Okay.”

 

-

 

Alex looks stunning, wearing a sequined blue dress that ties around her neck and dips down her bare back, thin lines of gemstone-crusted silver weaving around her fingers and wrists. She’s wearing shiny patent-leather heels that match her olive skin, making her just a couple of inches taller than Nick, the perfect height to rest her hand in his back pocket as her Mom takes pictures of them on the winding staircase of the Quinn house. He lets his hand drift to just below her hip as her mom snaps away, their matching grins betraying nothing of the game of grab ass they’re playing in plains sight. 

 

She sees them off into Nick’s car, which he’s managed to get cleaned up enough that she can’t even tell it’s a reclaimed beater, and Alex gleefully starts to flick through the radio stations, windows down as they hit the highway. 

 

She tells him about her plans for college, and they make small talk about joining up. She wants to be an officer, but he’ll settle for grunt. 

 

“Why? You’re a smart guy, Nick. It’s a higher pay grade.”

“I’m just not into nerd stuff, I guess.”, he quips. 

 

“Don’t sell yourself so short.”, Alex tells him as they pull into the parking lot. “You’re a really good guy.” 

 

-

 

To his credit, Nick tries his best to have fun with Alex. 

 

She’s a decent dancer and doesn’t mind grinding up against him in the blindspots of the teacher chaperones, and sneaks him a sip from one of the flasks that it seems every senior boy has snuck into the gym, which is decorated with thin strings of hanging lights and bouquets of bright flowers, the year painted on a huge, floating banner above the dance floor. 

 

Bars of lights are flashing courtesy of the drama department across the walls, and the photography club has a photobooth set up just outside the gym doors, where kids are congregating to take silly photos and shoot peace signs at the camera. 

 

Nick sees Ellie there, dressed in a ruched red dress, and Jake,  posed together in each other’s arms, before turning his attention back to Alex and sharing sodas and a bowl of chips, the peak of high school catering; with her. 

 

She kisses his cheek playfully, and leads him back out on the dance floor to meet her friends. They share a slow dance; swaying against each other’s hips as they circle around the other couples on the floor, and Nick happily buys her a rose to stick in her hair as the dance starts to wind down. 

 

Most of the freshmen, who still get picked up, have started to trickle out, and the announcement is made for the votes for Spring Court to start being tallied up. Nick had voted for himself for Spring King, smirking at how incredibly unlikely it was; and put in a vote for Izzy for Queen. She was a good girl, and besides, it seemed like the kind of thing that mattered to her. Anna and Jake; as far as he was concerned, could suck it. 

 

He and Alex relax against the back of the gym; draining the last dregs of their punch as Anna takes the stage that’s been set up in the middle of the gym, a bright blue box in her hands. 

 

“Did you vote for me?”, Nick teases, squeezing Alex’s hand. 

 

“Oh, hell no. That’s gonna be another thirty dollars.”, she jokes back, relaxing against his touch. “Ready to see this trainwreck?”

 

“You bet.” 

 

The two of them slip into the crowd of students; all jostling together as they jockey for the best view of the stage. 

 

“Now this year; we had a record number of votes, and we thought we would try a little something different.”, Anna’s sickly sweet voice spoke over the crowd. 

 

“We’re going to reveal your royalty, but afterwards, we’re going to say something about the person who’s won. We’re so happy to be such a close school community and we know that everyone who’s been voted to the court is someone who all of us know very well. Remember, it’s all about celebrating you!”

 

Nick practically groaned and rolled his eyes as Anna began to go through the Princesses and Princes, listing off their names and some empty compliments or achievement, like so-and-so the Tennis star with amazing hair, and so-and-so future NBA player who was great at history. Alex clapped heartily with every name, as if she actually remembered each one of these anonymous kids. 

 

“And now, for our king and queen! As always, ladies first!”, Anna began, placing her hand back into the blue box to pull out a pink envelope. She sliced it open with a fingernail, and feigned shock at the name written on the card inside. 

 

“Your Spring Queen; Eleanor Bishop!”, she called out. Nick’s eyes widened. 

 

Had Jack and Buckner’s plan backfired so badly that they’d ended up making Ellie popular for real? 

 

He could see Ellie, still stuck to Jake’s side, sputter in shock. 

 

“Eleanor Bishop? Oh, there you are. C’mon, girl, get your crown!”, Anna shouted, seeing her start to make her way to the stage through the crowd. 

 

The clapping and cheers followed her up to the stage, the train of her gown billowing around her feet. Nick could see her placid smile; the glittering lights that reflected from her jewelry as she climbed up the stairs. 

 

“Of course, we all know Ellie, right guys?”

 

A few cheers and claps sounded from the crowd of kids. 

 

“Ellie is such a...great teacher.”, Anna started, giggling to herself into the microphone. Ellie looked slightly puzzled under the lights; but Anna barelled on. “She’s taught us all so many things, but I really have to thank her for...showing my boyfriend a few of the things we’ve found out he really likes.” 

 

The crowd started to laugh, and Nick felt his stomach tighten. There was somethign that wasn’t right about any of this. 

 

“Actually, he wanted to say a couple of things- don’t worry, Mr. Westburn! We’re keeping it PG! Jake-?” 

 

Nick feels his heart sink, all of a sudden; as Ellie’s jaw dropped; her painted lips forming a perfect “o”. 

 

A spotlight swung from the rafters of the gym down on top of Jake; who stood beside Buckner and a couple of the other guys. 

 

“She’s great at sharing!”, he shouts, eliciting both a gasp, and then a peal of laughter from the collective crowd. 

 

“Oh, shit.”, Alex mutters beside him; but Nick’s eyes are locked to Ellie. He’s too far away to see the gears in her brain spin, to see her make sense of what exactly is going on as Anna prattles on; her voice lost in the crowd’s laughter and shocked chatter. 

 

WIthout a moment’s warning, she bolts from the stage in a flash of red, not seeming to care that she almost trips over her heels on the way out of the gym’s emergency exits, pushing past kids and teachers who are shaking their heads at the state of the situation. One of them motions for Anna to just go ahead and move on, oblivious to whatever kind of teen drama is going on. 

 

“Oops. Girl emergency!”, Anna jokes, and the crowd erupts in another howl of laughter. Nick feels like he might throw up, watching Ellie shove the doors open, letting a chill draft waft through the gym; where it sinks into his bones like ice. 

 

Pushing Alex aside, he cuts through the crowd, ignoring their protests as he steps on toes and tears at dresses, chasing after Ellie before the door shuts again. 

 

“Ellie!”, he shouts, tailing her into the parking lot, where without the music, he can hear her breaths hitch into sobs. She ducks in between cars and bobs and weaves, at what seems to him like an impossible speed until he notices that she’s ditched her heels, ironically, but the wheels of his car. 

 

She’s sprinting away, along the side of the highway, the torn bottom of her dress waving like a flag behind her. 

 

“Ellie, wait!”, he keeps calling out, pumping his legs to keep pace with her. “Ellie!” 

 

She disappears behind the gas station, and Nick sinks down, his hands on the tops of his knees, breathing hard. 

 

What the hell is he supposed to do now? 


	4. Interlude: The Sheriff

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> filler; no killer :)

Ellie is freezing, hungry and breathless and sore and she picks one of her mother’s garden gnomes from the Bishop’s front porch, using the pointed tip of the little man’s hat to break open the glass panel on their front door. 

Her hand slips inside between the jutting shards of glass, and she lets herself inside, still breathing hard as she lets the door slam behind her. Her eyes are glazed over; the living room hazy and soft at the edges as she tries to warm herself up. 

Bolting from school and ditching her shoes somewhere before the gas station and the general store was clearly not the brightest idea, she saw, watching her reflection in the hallway mirrors as she shoved a heavy wooden chest in front of the door to stave off intruders, just like Gibbs had taught her. 

Her bare feet are torn and bloody, matching the shade of the dress she had been so thrilled her mother let her borrow, knees and shins bruised a throbbing purple shade. Her nails are caked with dirt and blood from tripping across the road on her way home, and somehow, the intricate updo that she had copied meticulously from one of those magazines had come undone, leaving her hair hanging loosely in tangled threads from the crown of her head. 

She looks like Carrie, without the cool powers. 

Ellie’s heart is still pounding, as she gingerly walks through the darkened hallways of her house. Her parents are out of town for the weekend, and she had planned to spend a couple of night at Anna’s and come back on Sunday before they flew back in on Monday morning. 

Anna. 

God, how could she have been so stupid? 

How could she have believed that Jake and Buckner, who had hated her since they were born, would ever have become her friends? 

Or that Anna and Izzy, and the other girls liked her; when they’d been laughing and mocking her behind her back for months? 

She’d just wanted friends; so badly, that all comprehension had apparently gone out the window. She’d even blown off Tim McGee’s constant phone calls to hang out and work on his computer, and now, Ellie realizes, bitterly as she flicks on the bathroom light, she’d rather be nowhere else but the floor of his bedroom, flipping happily through one of the manuals he had collected in his desk. 

Ellie turned the knob on the faucet, wincing as hot water washed into her scraped hands, and set to work on scrubbing off her makeup. Crying was far better than the lotion her mom used, she noted with a scoff. She’d thought she looked beautiful, when Jake had come to pick her up with his megawatt smile all lit up for her, his car freshly washed and his arms warm around her as they had kissed. 

It was all a lie. 

Guys like him would never be into girls like her, and she’d thrown all reason out the window just because she’d been stunned that anyone actually cared. That tended to happen when you spent most of your life being the butt of a joke; a punchline for the better endowed to whisper to their friends between classes. 

She scrubs hard until her cheeks are red and ruddy; her puffy eyes sweeping across to the medicine cabinet where she pulls out the family’s first aid kit. Some of the cuts and scrapes are deep, forcing her to bite down on the inside of her cheek as she pours peroxide over the gashes. Somehow, none of it hurts as much as the squeezing feeling in her chest, or the lump in the back her throat that bobs back up every time she tries to swallow back her tears. 

Bandages, gauze, a couple of Tylenol’s to keep her from whimpering like a pathetic child, it’s all methodical and simple and easy. 

Ellie brushes her teeth and her hair, too, before the throws the dress in her mother’s hamper and finds herself in George’s old room, digging through her favorite brother’s drawers until she finds one of his old t-shirts that still smells like gasoline and summer sunshine, just like him- to slip over her head. 

George has always told her that she can call him whenever she wants; but Ellie knows that no one wants a call from their weird little sister on a Friday night, crying like she’s a little kid who hasn’t been invited to a birthday party. 

She tiptoes into George and John’s room, and pulls herself into John’s top bunk, letting herself finally relax as she sinks into a cloud of Star Wars sheets and a groaning mattress that had taken more than its share of teenage boy. She wishes the boys were home; as she wraps her arms around herself and falls into a fitful, dreamless sleep. 

-

The next morning, Gibbs drives up the Bishop’s driveway, revelling in the early calm of their town just after sunrise. His officers, smart-mouthed Tony DiNozzo and his partner Ziva David had written up enough kids for being a bit too hammered in public the night before, and the sheriff expected that by now, those kids were all lying curled up in each other on their parent’s sofas, sleeping off their burgeoning hangovers as the sky turns pink and orange above. He finds it calming, the promise of a new day; as he climbs out of his truck and starts to make his way up their porch. Ellie hadn’t been on any of Tony or Ziva’s reports, which meant either she hadn’t spent the night at a party, or was just smart enough not to get caught. Gibbs chuckles to himself, deciding on the latter. Ellie’s growing up, beyond her awkward years and into a fine young lady, and he can’t stop the pang in his heart that comes with realizing that Kelly isn’t doing the same beside her. 

She was supposed to be spending the night at a friend’s while Barbara and the husband spent a weekend in the city; which Gibbs knows, better than her own father, actually means that she spent the night at her boyfriend’s. He may not be chasing Kelly’s crushes around town, but the part of him that’s still a rakish, reckless teenage boy with far too much time on his hands remembers those days with a striking clarity. 

He jogs lightly up the steps, his panic buttons triggered suddenly as he notices the door broken open. Break-ins were more common in the summer, but he didn’t put it past a couple of kids with a couple too many beers in their blood to try to steal a TV. Damn that it had to happen to the Bishops, though. 

Gibbs pushes gently against the doorknob, meeting with some resistance on the other side from a wooden chest shoved in front of the doorframe. 

“Ellie?”, he calls, curiously into the house, remembering her lithe body, crouched beside him as he taught her how to stay safe when she was old enough to stay at home alone. But why would she have been home? 

“Ellie?”, he asks again, knocking against the window glass. “It’s Gibbs. Checking up on the house. You home?” 

He could hear a bit of rustling above him, coming from one of the bedrooms, and his head whips up, old cop’s reflexes sweeping over the covered windows hanging above him. 

“Right, well, I’m gonna fix up this door.”, he tells her, or whoever is up there, reaching to his hip to ready his service weapon just in case. 

Footsteps pad down the stairs inside, creaking lightly under someone’s weight. Gibbs can see a flash of gray, and blonde inside through the glass, darting from the kitchen to the front of the house. The crate pushed in front of the door moves aside, screeching on the tile as it’s dragged from the door frame, leaving the door to swing open in the early morning breeze. 

He’s not quite sure what he was expecting, but it sure isn’t Ellie, her eyes deep and darkened with tiredness, her bare skin colored with fresh bruises as she furiously wipes at her red-rimmed eyes. 

She looks up at him helplessly, as if she can’t come up with a proper excuse, and Gibbs steels his face into the perfect mask he’s practiced on duty all of these years. 

He’s going to get to the bottom of this. 

-

To her credit, Ellie holds out for longer than some of the POW’s Gibbs remembers from when he was overseas in Desert Storm. Her mouth is locked in a thin, straight line, and from the first time he reaches for her, wanting to bring her into his arms and offer her whatever comfort he could, she bolts into one of the bathrooms, and locks the door behind her. He waits, pouring himself a coffee while he can hear her rustling around in the bathroom, clearly believing she can wait him out. 

His mind races to the worst of possibilities, what could have happened if that boyfriend of hers had forced her into something that she hadn’t wanted, or if there had been an accident and the kids had dispersed to avoid getting into trouble. But, possibilities don’t help in the present moment, and if there’s one thing he has in spades, it’s patience. 

It’s almost nine when she finally slips out, clearly expecting Gibbs to be long gone, her shoulders sagging when she sees him still seated at the kitchen table. 

“It’s nothing.”, she says, her chin stuck out defiantly as though that would help hide her tears. 

“Doesn’t look like nothing.” 

“It’s not...It’s not what you think.”, she says, throwing open the pantry to find herself something to eat. 

“What do I think?” 

“It didn’t go anywhere with Jake. It never would have gone anywhere.”, she told him, her voice colored with bitterness. 

“So you said no, and he started to hit you?”

Ellie regards him with a genuinely puzzled expression, shaking her head slowly. “What- what makes you think he would have wanted that with me, anyway?”, she scoffs, reaching for a container of cheese puffs. 

“All I got is what’s in front of me, and it doesn’t look good.”

She turns to face him, knowing she can’t avoid having this conversation, her cheeks reddening with humiliation as she forces herself to speak. 

“I didn’t- um, really like the dance, so I left. And I just- wanted to come home. Running in heels isn’t the best idea, I guess.” 

Gibbs could feel himself relax slightly, though his eyebrows still arced upwards. “You ran home in the middle of the night?” 

“Uh-huh. I just really...hated it. I needed to get out of there. So I did.”, Ellie replies, pulling herself into one of the chairs opposite Gibbs. 

“That’s what happened?” 

“Yeah, that’s it.”, she says, her eyes lowered to focus on the handful of cheese puffs she was slowly lifting up to her mouth. 

He huffs out a breath through his lips, nodding. “Okay. I trust you. So, okay.”

Ellie’s watery eyes meet his from across the table, but she stays silent, and Gibbs reaches forward, cupping her cheek in his hand. 

“You’re okay, Ell. You’re fine, understand me?” 

She nods, and he supposes that’s got to be all right for now. 

-

Gibbs is fixing up the glass on the BIshop’s front door when he sees another car start to drive up the dirt driveway, a teenage boy behind the wheel. It isn’t Jake Malloy, this boy is darker-skinned and his eyes are nearly black, glaring down at the sun. He’s speeding down the drive, some latin rap song blaring from his speakers. He nearly spins out braking far too abruptly, and when he cuts the engine, Gibbs can almost feel the anger that radiates from him, as he stalks up the path. 

He can’t be too old, maybe Ellie’s age, maybe younger, but the kid carries himself with all the rage that Gibbs keeps buried deep in his chest. His heavy leather jacket hangs far too loose over his shoulders, his balled up, bloody fists swinging by his side.

Had this kid been the one who beat up Ellie? 

No, can’t be- Gibbs realizes, locking eyes with this boy, whose eyes are rimmed with angry tears, as if he’s spent a whole day and night fighting with himself.  
Maybe, hopefully, the kid is lost- the town’s on the way in to a few cities, and kids make mistakes and run away all the time. Gibbs thinks, maybe he can get the kid a tank of gas and send him on his way. 

“Mr. Bishop?”, he calls, jogging up to join Gibbs on the porch. 

“Who’s asking?” 

“I’m...my name is Nick, uh- Nick Torres, sir. I go to school...I’m in a lot of Ellie’s classes.”, he says, his eyes locked to Gibbs’, firey and intense. 

“You here to drop off homework?”

Gibbs lets his question hang in between them, like he does with his suspects, waiting for Nick to fill in the silence. 

“No...sir, I’m not. I...I need to...um-”, he sighs, and pushes his backpack out towards Gibbs. “These are Ellie’s.”

He unzips the bag, and swirls the contents around with his fingers. There’s a sweater, jeans, a thin t-shirt that Gibbs remembers being one of Ellie’s birthday presents from the year before. 

“Any reason why you’ve got these?”, he asks, his voice hardening as concern starts to take over. 

“Sir...it’s kind of a long story.” 

Gibbs nods curtly, and points towards the Bishop’s porch swing. “Sit.” 

“Sir?” 

“I got time.”

-

Nick stops and starts as he tells the story, about moving to Oklahoma, and making the football team, and sitting quietly by while Buckner made Jake take the bait of his stupid dare; how things had changed after Christmas and how they just hadn’t left her alone. 

The pig prank. Stealing her clothes, and how Jake had been cheating the whole time. How Buckner had told all the girls to dig into the things that made Ellie herself, how they would all laugh about it in the back of his car when he would give the other kids a ride to their houses. 

“I- The first day I was here, she was the only person who was nice to me. She’s the only person who’s ever been really nice to me and- I treated her like shi- I couldn’t do the same because I was scared of those...guys. I don’t even know why..”, he says quietly, looking back down at the ground. 

Gibbs sucks in a deep breath, and sighs. “That’s something you’re going to have to live with.” 

“I know. I- I don’t know if Ellie’s home but I wanted to...I don’t know, say sorry.” 

“You think sorry’s gonna cut it?” 

“I gotta start somewhere right? And...my sister said if I didn’t apologize I can start sleeping by the bus stop in town.” 

Gibbs shook his head, smirking. 

“Alright- I’ll tell you what-”, he says, pulling his notepad from his breast pocket and a carpenter’s pencil from his toolbox. “-you can start by putting this all in writing. I want names, phone numbers, details- whatever you got.” 

“What, like for the cops? Are the cops here? Is Ellie okay?”, he sputters, eyes wide with worry. 

Gibbs shrugs, and taps the sherrif’s office emblem on the front of the notepad. “I’m the cops.” 

Nick swallows, and Gibbs swears he can hear the poor boy’s heart rate spike into overdrive. 

“I thought you were Ellie’s dad.” 

“Mm-hmm. Get started on that, and I’ll get you something to drink for the road.” 

-

Ellie watches them both from her window, scared to push the glass pane open for fear that Gibbs will hear, and come back upstairs to grill her. She can’t hear a thing, but she knows it’s Nick, and can’t imagine why he would come here- or even how he would have found out where she lived. 

Maybe Jake had told her so they could egg the house, she thought, rolling her eyes slightly at the thought. Either way; Gibbs takes care of him, and Ellie watches as he leaves, driving back up on to the highway. She’s relieved, throwing herself back on her bed and wincing just slightly, as last night’s painkillers have begun to wear off. She really should have thought it all through better, because today, she just feels like she’s been hit with a car. 

People, Ellie has realized, don’t make easy sense. They don’t do what they should, or what’s right, and she thinks to herself, that maybe they’ll never make sense to her. 

They aren’t like puzzles, or math, or art- that fit together and work. People always work against each other. 

Maybe growing up, just means getting that and being okay with being alone. 

She pulls her desk drawers open, and grabs her sketchbook from the top of the messy piles of papers. It’s been a while, she thinks, shutting her eyes as she forms a picture in her mind. 

She barely hears the knocking on her bedroom door, until she feels someone grab her shoulders and pull her back from her desk. 

“We need to have a talk.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wanted this part and the next to be together, but i needed to break them up because it was too damn long :( 
> 
> anyway; hope you guys liked it! ellie and nick will definitely interact more in the chapter to come- i think the seasons idea was not the best, because there's lots to cover and it doesn't fit that structure the best. 
> 
> oh well- new ncis tomorrow! get hyyype for the bishop ep of the year!

**Author's Note:**

> One of my friends told me this season of NCIS was good; and boy was it because I'm six feet deep in Ellick now...oops. 
> 
> Timeline notes: I based the rough timeline here on Nick's birth year being 1984 in canon, so this would be in October- December of 2000. Nick is a sophomore (Year or Grade 10), up to you whether this is because he has a late birthday, or because of all the moving around he did, since sophomores are typically 15 turning 16 and he already is. Ellie's a year or a few months younger, so she's 15, turning 16 anytime after Christmas in this story, in the "proper" year for her age, just academically ahead. Her birthday/year has never been on the show so you can use the same birth year, or she would have been born in 1985. I think she is younger than Nick by more in the show, but I didn't want to make the difference too big here and want them to have some time growing together which couldn't happen if Nick was 17 or 18 already and could enlist like he wants to! :)
> 
> Other notes: I was born not too long before the year 2000, so I hope I haven't made any glaring mistakes. 
> 
> Also, I just got the url agentbishop on tumblr so you can talk to me on messages there if you really liked this fic and wanted to chat about it!


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